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Topic: Civil War Mech & Tech Theorycrafting (Read 4029 times)

It's finally here! With the timeline skip, we'll be looking at 4 new fan favorite mechs as well as oodles of new tech to shake up the battlefield (and balance), hopefully for the better. We'll see.

First up, we have the Uziel. This is one of the mechs that really sticks in my memory from the MW4 days; with a unique shape to it and some cool loadouts, even stock. I love the style for it in this game; it was one of the better-designed mechs in MW4 (even the original art for it is pretty good) and it seems that Alex has stayed pretty close to that design, which pleases me. The biggest gripe I have with this mech (which isn't much of a complaint, more of a pet peeve) is its Hero mech: the Belial. Now, it took a reddit thread to jog my memory of why that sounded so familiar, but it's because the mech was introduced in MechAssault as an OP (iirc) version of the Uziel with a Gauss Rifle in each arm. I do think it's cool for PGI to pay it some homage, and copying that build over to MWO would have been a bit absurd (even with Light Gauss it'll go slow and have very little armor), but I really wish that they'd have gone all-out with it.

Next is the Annihilator. This mech is known for two things: tying the Urbanmech for the slowest thing on the battlefield, and carrying a ridiculous amount of firepower. The best way to describe this thing is as the Inner Sphere Dire Wolf; it has the same maximum engine, very similar hardpoints, and probably very similar builds as well. The mech's design is really quite odd, but again, it's in a way that's faithful to the original. Even more than the Cyclops, the shape of this mech's neck and head conjure images of the Geth from Mass Effect, lending a suitably alien aesthetic to this mech. Still, I would love to see it without its hands waving in the air.

The first clan mech of the pack is the Cougar. While I have appreciated this mech a great deal in other games, and I think it'll be a real hoot in MW5, I gotta say I'm a disappointed in it here. Weighing in at 35 tons and running at 87.1 KPH after speed tweak, it is the single slowest light mech in the game, and it's even slower than most mediums. Needless to say, I have very low expectations for this mech, but it does have roughly 18.5 tons of pod space. So who knows, maybe it'll be a half-decent weapon boat.

Finally, we have the Mad Cat MK II. Easily one of my own all-time favorites, I cannot wait to play this thing. The design is great; it has a very IIC approach of keeping similar features but using new geometry, and I am in love with the arms. As with the Uziel, it seems to stick pretty closely to existing art for the mech, and that's not a bad thing at all. The mech appears to have pretty good hitboxes (assuming that the missile pods go away when you don't have missiles), lots of hardpoints, relatively high mounts (dem arms), and on top of all that, it's a nomnimech (as in, not an omnimech). So it'll have lots of options for customization. I'm worried that its builds will be too symmetrical and its arms too wide, but it still looks pretty good.

Perhaps more important than all of these new mechs is the new techs! Seriously, all of the new options have the potential to completely change the meta. I wanted to do a short list of all the bits I'm excited about, but really the list of things I'm not particularly excited about would be way shorter (Stealth Armor, LAMS, IS ER lasers, IS Streaks, LMGs, LAPs, and LTAG). Not to say they won't be good, they just don't tickle me yet.

As such, I'm going to be going over builds as usual, but with an emphasis on making the most of the new technology. I'm also saying that each point of Light Ferro weighs .0296 tons, which seems to line up with the Belial build. But without further ado, let's take a closer look.

Uziel

Not sure if it'll be better than the existing mediums, but it's fun to think about its futuretech possibilities.

These guys look like the best option for a straight-up double Heavy Gauss build. And by best, I mean pretty much only.

Predictions

The Mad Cat MK II is gonna be one of the greats, the Uziel will be pretty good, and the Annihilator will be funny as hell (seriously, I didn't even scratch the surface of the possible silliness). Let's not talk about the Cougar.

I have no idea how the tech is going to be, though, since we don't have any of the actual stats. The Inner Sphere gets a lot more cool stuff than Clans, though, so that could do some interesting things to the balance of the game (I'm already hyped on Light Ferro).

GMan129 is an officer of the Steel Jaguar competitive team, he is the owner of and writer for MetaMechs, and he does some writing for NGNG as well. He has been playing MechWarrior Online since the early days of closed beta, and has spent far too much time and money on this crap. If you're interested in supporting his self-destruction, consider checking out his Patreon!